Carry Me
by Sumhope
Summary: She is a deadly mermaid, he a peaceful priest. But somewhere along the way that all stopped to matter. A drabble styled exploration of the film and possibly beyond. Warning DARK
1. The Hunt

**The Hunt**

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><p>Men are loud.<p>

Loud and stupid.

Their minds only occupied with their cruel lusts. She can see it in their eyes as they reach out to her, their hands dirty and greedy and grasping, always grasping.

_Taking what is not theirs._

She has the sight.

She sees each dark thought and reads every perverse lust. She can see it in the shadows of their beards, the bludgeoned shape of their hands.

Each acid breath that washes over her face from their broken yellow teeth sickens her, fills her with a raging emptiness.

_Undine floated back to them. Her once ensnaring eyes cut from her face, dark yawning pits in their wake. __She found Sabrina herself, crushed between the rocks, her arms covered in bruises, her head shorn of all her glorious copper hair. __Corella had come back to them in pieces on the tide, her mouth opened in a soundless grimace._

She feels the cut of her teeth against her lips.

She parts her mouth and swallows their screams whole.


	2. The Creatures

**The Creatures**

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><p>Philip clutched the lantern fast, his heartbeat loud in his ears, the good book like a weight against his chest.<p>

He had first heard of mermaids from a traveller his sixth year. He remembers because it was the summer of his parent's death. The year was 1603 and the plague visited London and onward. Black death swept through his village until the dead outnumbered the living. His parents fell ill and the deathcart came and took them away and he was sent to St. Martin's.

He sat in a daze in the halls of the monastery while the world buzzed around him and stared at the moss, green against the cracked stone.

One of the the injured, a worn looking man with a bandaged stump for a leg jostled his arm, his gnarled hands balancing a wooden bowl, his beard splattered in soup.

He had never seen an amputee and he remembered feeling both nauseous and horrified at the bloodied bandages. His own small leg had tingled fiercely.

_Eye'en me leg are you boy. Ahhh now dn't be embarrassed, I'll tell you who done it. It was a creature that tore it off. A syren from the depths of the sea. _

_I heard the singen first, then seen er eyes as bottomless as the sea. Got tripped up in a daze like. Seaweed hair that tangled me up. Dragged me into the depths of the solid blu. Couldn't fight it, her sharp teeth sliced away me leg and I kick'd with me good one away. _

He jerks the man back away from the creature, her skin a shimmer of silver gold under the moonlight. Through the pounding of his ears he can hear the creatures melody, a drug to the senses. He catches glimpses of glowing flesh and closes his eyes against their dark gaze.

The men are leaning over the boat faster than he can pull them back. One tumbles over the side, his scream lost to the depths. The others jump back in horror as rosy lips turn to fangs and ivory flesh to scales.

_Them be mermaids boy. Above the water they are the most beautiful creatures. Beautiful but deadly boy. Now dn't you forget it. _

He never did.


	3. Come Crumbling Down

**Come Crumbling Down**

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><p>She watches him pull the others back, his arms tense lines against the lantern glow, his head hanging low.<p>

Sometimes they resist. _The honor of men._

She purses her lips. She knows that is only a matter of time until he will lean over the boat into reaching arms.

He will give in.

He must give in.

_They always give in. _

She watches the boat break apart from a distance, her tail thrashing agitatedly in the water. Tension coils in her belly as her sisters pull them under. She dives, her eyes searching for his struggling body.

But they all look the same as they are pulled to the depths. Men have always looked the same to her. The thought fills her with panic and she has just enough time to feel surprised at this before the world explodes around her.

She must have blacked out because when she wakes her head pounds fiercely. The current has swept her away from the safety of the bay into the shallows. She grips her aching head and the water turns pink around her fingers.

Man's fire lights the sky, beautiful but deadly. She floats in the water, dizzy and aimless. The great height of the lighthouse towers above her.

Twisting she rights herself and gasps to see him so close, so close she can reach out and touch him if she wanted. He stands with his back to her, staring out into the water, hands fisted at his sides. Her heart beats faster in her chest and she feels her teeth elongate in her mouth. It would be easiest thing in the world to slip them both beneath the water and she could already tell that he would taste_ so good_.

She can hear the distant sound of screams across the bay. She feels the wailing of her sisters pain like a second pulse underneath her skin.

Her fin glances off the sandy bottom.

She should leave, the men are coming with their nets.

Another blast tears the black over their heads and the tower crumbles towards him in a rush of falling stone.

_She pulls him back._


	4. Cast Out Your Nets

**Cast Out Your Nets**

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><p>Grasping the blunt edge of the stone he pulls his body upward out of the inky depths, coughing on the sting of salt water burning in his lungs. His legs feel like lead and he lays there for a moment, panting in the aftermath, so incredibly <em>grateful<em> to be alive.

He pushes himself to his feet and stares out at the distant glow on the water, his fingers unconsciously tracing the cross around his neck. His first thought is a prayer of thanks for his deliverance. He had asked god to save him in those last moments as the water rushed increasingly dark around him. The next thing he knew the blast hit and tore him apart from the scaly flesh. The exhilaration dies to a hollow inside him as more explosions rip the night. Distant dying screams stretch across the water. A nauseating wave of guilt hits. He grips the metal hard, his thumb cutting painfully into its blunt edge.

They hadn't stood a chance.

Blackbeard had known all along of course. He had no qualms about sacrificing his crew to obtain what he wanted. His cruelty seemed to be only matched by his coldness. Philip found himself alternating between pitying and loathing the man.

The last weeks had shown him something of violence. Still the ferocity, the sheer will of these creatures was something else entirely, something unnatural. It had terrified him beyond anything Blackbeard had ever inspired.

He now imagines that each shadow, each rippling wave was one of them and he tenses, coiled and anxious, scanning the water. _They were out there. _

His eyes find the dully glinting hilt stuck between the rocks the same moment something cold and wet snakes around his ankle, ripping his feet out from underneath him. The ground rushes toward him while debris rains down.

Momentarily stunned he desperately kicks out and miraculously the grip loosens around his ankle. Grasping the sword he sloshes through the water following the rippling motion determined to _fight back_.

_He will not lay down and die._

He sees a flash of golden scales underneath the water and stabs clumsily at the water. The blade sinks into something solid, surprising him.

Another explosion rings out, closer than before, and the glow of the blast illuminates her face. Her eyes are deep and bottomless as if they hold all of the seas secrets in their depths. He feels her gaze like a blow to his gut, sending the air careening from his lungs.

She looks young, younger than she should. Merely a child playing temptress.

She doesn't make a sound as he pulls the sword free of her tail, and doesn't move toward him. Only stares with those deep wide eyes. He blinks and she is caught. He watches her thrash in the hungry folds of the net, hissing at the hands that hold her down. The water laps at his thighs and something thick gathers in his throat.

He looks away from her before he can name what it is.

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><p><em>massive thanks to all of the reviewers! at some point i'll actually go see the film and then these chapters will start coming a little more quickly.<em>


	5. A Glass Coffin

**A Glass Coffin**

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><p>They drag her from the water.<p>

She snarls, buckling against their hands and the tight hold of the net, fighting with everything she has.

The warm air hits her hard, sending tendrils of heat scattering across her scaly flesh. The heat spreads and spreads until it is a flame of constant agony unlike anything she has ever felt. The air is so unlike the cool soothing depths of her element and as she is dragged further away from the shore, until even the sight of it is gone, she feels herself grow more and more weak. Her throat and lungs burn with each breath, the air heavy and pressing, a suffocating heat.

_Is this what it feels like to drown?_

They hold her down, pressing her into the damp leaves. The grit of the soil feels like sand in an open wound against her aching skin.

Their hands wander familiarly across her, groping and squeezing, pawing at her tender flesh. She gnashes her teeth, baring her fangs. They've grown courageous in the wake of her weakness but in the shadowy recesses of their faces she can see the fear waiting to resurface. They haven't forgotten that in the water she can tear them to pieces.

She is swung up, the net cutting into her like the sharp bite of a hundred angry cuttlefish, the sudden wash of vertigo nauseating. She is dumped into a tank, a glass cage filled with fetid water.

The water sloshes sickly around her and she has to bend her tail in the small confined space.

_She is alive._

Instead of relief she feels sick. _What will they do to her,_ she wonders.

She watches them surround him, watches how they pound him on the back and congratulate him on his catch. _I thought you were different._

Her fingers dig into her glass coffin.

_Is this what they had felt as she pulled them into the dee_p_?_

This empty feeling that seeps through her pores and creeps slowly along her spine and fills her up with nothing all together.


	6. Something Like Guilt

**Something Like Guilt**

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><p>He feels himself drifting, slowing, letting the others pass him. Soon she disappears from view, nearly out of sight.<p>

Around him the forest is alive with foreign sounds. Very little light filters through the canopy of the trees and yet the air is sticky with heat, a heavy oppressive weight. He wipes the sweat from his brow, his hand trembling.

He could still feel her stare, her dark eyes boring into him. Through him. Accusing him.

_They would've taken one of them. Maybe even her. _

And he couldn't stop them. All he could do was pray for their souls, pray and preach the good books words. Words that seemed to laugh at him now, twist in his mind turning sour on his lips.

_You made the heavens oh Lord, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. _

A glint of light flares ahead for the briefest moment. Light reflecting off water. He stumbles, his foot catching on a tangle of roots.

_It doesn't matter,_ he tells himself. _She's not even human. _

…_the seas and all that is in them._

Remorse is there, bubbling underneath the surface, a festering open sore that grows more and more rank with each passing moment.

Because he was the one who had caught her. Not Sparrow or Blackbeard or his daughter.

_If only he had… If he hadn't. _

It wouldn't have changed anything, not really. They would still have their mermaid and he would still be here, caught in some sort of twisted purgatory, paying for his sins.

He swallows back the truth and puts one foot in front of the other.


	7. Captive Breath

**Captive Breath**

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><p>Rage had suffused, twisting through her veins, eating at her on the inside. Her anger was a dark seething thing, but it had given her the strength she needed to push the fear to the side. Fear that whispered that she'd be nothing but a rotting shell when this was all over.<p>

She spent the first hours of her capture searching for escape, fingers scraping across every inch of glass hoping to find a weakness, something, _anything_. But as dawn stained the horizon and they moved further inland whatever hope she might have harbored bled out.

She had other problems though. She was running out of air.

What little there was she had used up and by the time the sun beat down overhead it was becoming harder and harder to catch her breath.

They had set her down among the leaves and dirt but she hardly noticed as pain spikes at her temple and blossoms out. Dizzy, her vision swimming, she presses up to the seam of wood and glass desperate for air. Mouth gaping like a fish for water she tries to call out but her throat is dry, her vocal cords betraying her.

Vision dimming, she dully registers that outside of her cage of glass and stagnant water _he_ is there, voice sharp and determined.

A blur of motion and then there is air. It smells of piss and sweat and shit, of man, but she is grateful for it none the less. Breath fogging the glass she gulps it down waiting for the grey to recede.

He is crouched down, hand resting on the glass and for a moment she meets his eyes with her own. Something flickers through his, but it is gone before she can name what it is. His black book, its pages yellowed with age, is wedged in between her and suffocation.

_Why would he help her? What does he play at?_

He stands and goes.

She sags, scales quivering as every cell in her body swells with oxygen. Her tail coils, twitching agitatedly.

_But why?_

She lifts her webbed hand to the glass, presses it against the fading imprint of his own and wonders.


	8. Carry On

**Carry On**

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><p>She feels lighter than he had expected. Not that he had thought of how heavy she would be to hold. Or that he had thought of holding her at all.<p>

But still, it surprises him.

He remembers the coiling thrashing strength of her tail and his eyes wander down to the ivory flesh of her legs hooked over his arm. A small scattering of golden scales flickers under the speckled sunlight streaming down from the tree canopy overhead. He has the strangest urge to brush his fingers against them, to see if more flawless skin waits underneath.

Her cool breath tickles his neck as she shifts against him. And he flushes, afraid suddenly that she can hear his thoughts.

He should fear her. He should.

He remembers how sweet they sounded, before their eyes turned dark with blood lust and their fangs tore and ripped. They sounded like angels singing. Like something from a dream, something he had heard before in another lifetime.

He feels the swell of her breast against his arm with each breath and remembers the way she had pressed her face to the glass, her dark mouth open. All it would take is those lips parting and her teeth sinking into his flesh. She could send him to his maker with just the smallest movement. He should fear her.

He should fear her more than Blackbeard. Blackbeard who wanted his death like a pirate wanted a whore after months at sea. Blackbeard who's lust for eternal life only just outweighed his lust for inflicting death. He _should_ fear her more than Blackbeard.

But she saved him, didn't she? She had pushed him out of the way.

She is a monster. A creature of the deep. Flesh eater. But she feels so small in his arms, so delicate. He is struck with the thought that he must protect her. It is laughable. He cannot even protect himself.

He puts one foot in front of the other and carries her further towards her fate.

Her arms tighten around his neck and, despite months of being Blackbeard's prisoner, he has never felt so trapped.


End file.
